Can someone remind me how to remove my name from the list please? Much appreciated, Clare

From: External examiners discussion forum <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Fawcett, Lyn
Sent: 18 October 2019 09:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Annotating student work?

[EXTERNAL EMAIL]

Hi Petra

That point regarding feedback before final submission was made by Geoffrey Darnton, not me. So I am unable to comment on his methodology.

Lyn Fawcett

Retired

Senior Lecturer. Director of MSc Programmes

Ulster Business School

On 18 Oct 2019, at 09:01, Leimich, Petra <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Lynn,

Very interesting distinction you make there. However, I’d like to pick up on one of your final points. You say “several years of data showing that there is a statistically significant improvement in student attainment by those students who took up my offer of feedback before they submitted their final work compared with those students who did not take up my offer (by comparing final results of students who took up the offer against students who did not take up the offer).”

Without a control group, you cannot conclude that your feedback is the cause for the improvement. (correlation does not imply causation). It could be that the more engaged and possibly more organised students, are the ones that make use of your offer – but they would probably get better results anyway, with or without your feedback.

Regards

Petra

From: External examiners discussion forum <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Fawcett, Lyn
Sent: 17 October 2019 10:00
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Annotating student work?

CAUTION: This email originated from outside Edinburgh Napier University. Do not follow links or open attachments if you doubt the authenticity of the sender or the content.

Hi Geffrey

Thanks for a really comprehensive and helpful treatise on Annotation. I do think that feedback given to rationalise the marks at the summation of a piece of work can also be formative as they allow the student to improve when they take on work of a similar format later in the programme or elsewhere. Although as you know not every student takes on board feedback and even where it is formative may not take it on board. I used to give my Business Plan students (final year UG equivalent to Dissertation) detailed feedback so that they would be able to improve upon their approach if putting together something similar in employment.

Regards

<image001.png>

Mr S Lyn Fawcett BSc, PGDipHE, FIH, FCHERP, FHEA

Retired

Senior Lecturer, Director of MSc Programmes

Ulster Business School

From: External examiners discussion forum <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Geoffrey Darnton <[log in to unmask]>
Reply to: Geoffrey Darnton <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, 17 October 2019 at 09:16
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Annotating student work?

[EXTERNAL EMAIL]

Very interesting question Katie; it raises some fundamental pedagogical (some would argue andragogical in HE) questions.

The Sutton Trust have some interesting research confirming the substantial importance for learning of feedback.

However, it is very important to distinguish between feedback and result rationalization.

If a student does a summative assignment which is then marked and a final result delivered to the student accompanied by comments on the summative work, those comments are NOT feedback they are result rationalization. If the output of a student's work (apart from learning that has taken place) is the summative piece of work, feedback only applies if it is given BEFORE the delivery of the final summative work (typically, by comments on a draft of the work to be submitted and ample time for the student to take into account the feedback BEFORE delivery of that final piece of work; formative work may act as feedback, but only if it is directly relevant to the final output).

For example, in many modules I have taught I have told students that if they send me a draft of their proposed assignment typically 2 weeks before they must submit the work, I will sit with them face-to-face and provide feedback on the draft, which can then be ignored or acted on.

Therefore to deal with your question, the form in which feedback is delivered does not matter; what matters is that the feedback is direct and relevant to a draft of a piece of work (for example, for dissertations I have a set of checklists that contain comments about specific parts of a draft - students find them immensely helpful - and a publisher is interested in publishing them). I suspect you may really be talking about result rationalization which is a different matter: the reason that may not be particularly useful to students is that so often, once they have received the result of an assessment, they will not be given any opportunity to improve their result - therefore, technically it is not feedback and hence of limited future use by the student. Of course result rationalization (often called feedback) is not useful to students because they are not given an opportunity to improve their work.

I am a big fan of feedback given before a final piece of work is submitted - and I have several years of data showing that there is a statistically significant improvement in student attainment by those students who took up my offer of feedback before they submitted their final work compared with those students who did not take up my offer (by comparing final results of students who took up the offer against students who did not take up the offer).

One moral of the story is that if students do a piece of work and are then given their final result accompanied by comments about that work, those comments do not constitute feedback in a technical (systems theory) sense.

On a rather different point, as an external examiner I like to see at least some kind of mark on every page of student output, at least to show it has been seen - I despair at the number of exam papers I see that have no evidence that all pages of the exam paper have been seen by the marker (in some cases no mark whatsoever on the inside of exam answers).

best wishes
Geoffrey

On 16/10/2019 10:11, Katie Akerman wrote:

Dear colleagues,

We’re aware from our external examiner reports that a couple of institutions have stopped annotating student work for feedback purposes as they’ve found no evidence that it actually enables students to improve their work, and are using a feedback form alone – has anyone else done this, anything we might need to be aware of in adopting this?

Many thanks,

Katie

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